


Continued Pining Hearts

by kamanzi



Series: Camp Pining Hearts [2]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Camp Pining Hearts, F/F, Sequel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-01-27 08:50:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21389434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kamanzi/pseuds/kamanzi
Summary: Summer camp is long over, but nowhere near forgotten. With a few helping (read: aggressively pushy) hands, Peridot finally finds some closure from a months-ago fallout and faces the question, "What happens next?"At last: the sequel fic to Camp Pining Hearts, in three parts, and two years later than promised.
Relationships: Amethyst & Peridot (Steven Universe), Jasper & Peridot (Steven Universe), Lapis Lazuli/Peridot (Steven Universe)
Series: Camp Pining Hearts [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1542031
Comments: 17
Kudos: 86





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a sequel to Camp Pining Hearts, which was completed in 2017 by the same author. It is not recommended to read this work without reading its predecessor (or perhaps without re-reading it, if it's been a while).

Peridot stared blankly at her phone. Blinked. Breathed.

Her thumb hovered over the call button as she sat there, unsure. One more glance at her laptop screen, however, settled it. She tapped “Send” and brought the phone to her ear, listening hard while chewing on the thumbnail of her other hand.

After four rings, she answered.

“Yeah-lo?”

“It’s Peridot.”

There was laughter, then, “Yeah, Wondernerd, I know. Caller ID, huh?”

“Oh. Right.” Peridot pushed her glasses up to rest on her head before pinching the bridge of her nose. As she pondered exactly how to say what she wanted to say—and what it was that she even wanted to say—she heaved a great sigh.

Amethyst evidently heard the sigh. “Peri?” she asked, her voice uncharacteristically low. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Peridot said. But she punctuated the end of her sentence with a sniffle.

“Oh, jeez.” There was the sound of shuffling; Peridot imagined Amethyst sitting up, resting her elbows on her knees as she settled into the conversation. “Is it Lapis?”

Peridot released a mirthless cough-laugh combo. “Right in one,” she muttered. She didn’t say anything more, though. Instead, she squinted at the screen of the computer in her lap and began to reread the email that she’d opened almost two hours before.

There was a long pause before Amethyst said, “Well, are you gonna tell me, or do you want me to guess?”

“Sorry,” Peridot grunted. She cradled her cell phone between her ear and her shoulder, grabbed her laptop, and scooted to the foot of her bed. “Sorry,” she repeated. “Hold on, I’m moving to my desk. Give me a second.”

“For sure. Take your time.”

At that, Peridot removed the phone from her shoulder and placed it onto the laptop’s keyboard. She leaned forward, sliding the laptop onto the desk, the back of which was pushed flush against the bed. Then she lowered her own body onto the desk before next lowering herself into her chair, finally picking the phone back up and moving her glasses back down onto her face. “Okay, I’m back.”

To Peridot’s surprise, Amethyst chuckled. “Did you do that horror-movie-spider-crawl thing just now?”

Peridot couldn’t help but smile a little, too, glancing out of the corner of her eyes at the pristine, empty bed across the room. “Yeah, but my roommate left early for break, so—”

“Aw, she’s not there?” Amethyst groaned. “Less fun.”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, well. That makes this convo easier to have.” More shuffling, as if Amethyst had laid back down. “So, spill.”

Taking a deep breath, Peridot swiped at her laptop’s touch screen, scrolling back up to the top of the email. “She messaged me back,” she explained.

“_Finally. _ Read it.”

Peridot didn’t need telling twice. This routine had long since become—well—routine. “‘Peridot,’” she began.

Immediately, Amethyst cut in, “Oof. Formal greeting.”

“I know,” Peridot agreed. Then she pressed on. “‘Peridot. I’m sorry I haven’t gotten back to you in a while—’”

“About three weeks, actually.” A brief pause, then, “Sorry. Go on.”

Thankful that Amethyst could not see her rolling her eyes over the phone, Peridot continued.

_ ive been thinking about you a lot though. tbh i havent really _ stopped _ thinking about you since the day we left camp. i know thats kind of forward, i mean, we havent ever addressed what happened at camp since we left. but i feel like maybe its time we did. _

_ i ran into jasper a few weeks ago in the campus coffee shop. i hadnt seen her since june either and i stg almost had a heart attack right there. i dropped my drink at least. but she saw me too and she just like grabbed some napkins and helped me mop everything up. _

_ we got to talking, and she asked me about school and my parents. and then she asked me about you. it was so insanely awkwardly casual like: hey lapis i know we have this painful romantic history but just wondering have you spoken to my best friend recently? you know, the one you cheated on me with? _

_ obviously it didnt go exactly like that hahaha but _ oh _ it was so _ weird. _ i told her that youd messaged me literally that morning, and you know what she did? she _ nodded _ and said _ good. _ when we left the coffee shop she even _ hugged me. _ like WHAT?? where did that come from right?? _

_ so this whole time ive thought that you and jasper were still on bad terms. im not saying that you lied to me or anything, because you and i havent ever talked about jasper at all, but i guess the fact that we havent ever talked about jasper at all made me think that you two were still on bad terms. i guess i thought for some reason that youd let me know the second that you and jasper were officially okay or somewhere near it. _

_ i dont know. i guess i think i was expecting something to happen when you and jasper patched things up. something to happen with us i mean. but you and jasper have been okay for a while, havent you? she told me that youve come back to keystone at least three times since the semester started and that youve seen her each time. but you didnt even _ tell _ me that you were here let alone try to see me. weve never video chatted, weve never spoken on the phone, youve never even asked for my phone number. _

_ so honestly i got really mad at first right after I saw her. but then i got really embarrassed, because i think i realized that ive been projecting this whole thing onto you about what we were at camp and what we could be if stuff settled down and all. like maybe i over romanticized everything? maybe you didnt try to see me because you didnt _ want _ to see me? _

_ gah i feel like im dumping so much on you right now, and i really am sorry for that (even though my therapist would probably be pretty proud of me lol) but this wasnt how this message was supposed to go. _

heres _ how this message was supposed to go: hey. sorry i havent gotten back to you in a while, midterms and all, you get it, etc. im not going to be able to go home to golden state for thanksgiving which sucks but its okay because i think im going to transfer my credits to a community college over there so I can move back home next semester anyway. also i think its time for me to stop harboring leftover summer lovin type feelings for you so we should probably take a break from contact for a while. maybe dont message me back until I can work this stuff out for myself. _

“‘I’m sorry,’” Peridot finished in a croak, her voice having gone hoarse early on in her recitation. “‘Happy holidays. L.’”

Amethyst had been silent on her end of the phone for so long that Peridot had nearly forgotten she was there. Peridot was only reminded of Amethyst’s presence when she whistled a long, high note and said, “_Dang, _ Peri.”

Peridot leaned her elbow onto the desk, pressing her face into her hand. “I _ knew _it. I knew the second that Jasper texted me that she had seen Lapis—”

“What?” prompted Amethyst. “You knew she was going to dump you and run off to the other side of the country?”

Peridot’s chest gave a nasty throb. “She didn’t _ dump _ me, Amethyst. We aren’t dating.”

“And whose fault is that?” Amethyst replied, exasperation seeping into her voice. “I’ve been telling you for _ months_—”

“Hey,” Peridot snapped. She turned to glare into the earpiece of her phone, as if she would be able to see Amethyst glaring right back at her. “I don’t think you’re in any position to criticize my romantic shortcomings. Do you?”

“Low blow, dude,” Amethyst said. “At least _ I’m trying, _ huh? _ My _girl could come around. Yours won’t, though, as long as you keep sitting on your butt not doing anything about it!”

Fuming, Peridot could only scoff and turn around in her chair to stare icily out her window. Perhaps Amethyst couldn’t get the full effect of Peridot’s giving her the cold shoulder, but the action relieved the ball of the hot fury building in Peridot’s chest a bit anyway. Outside, the street lamps were just popping on, one by one. Any light that bled across the sky was falling from soft to dark gray. The campus buildings that were visible weren’t bustling at all in the way they did during the day, and very few students remained to slip across the slush that stuck stubbornly to the grass.

“Hey,” Amethyst eventually grumbled. “M’sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“Nah, it’s not. You probably didn’t call me so that I could rag on you, did you?”

Despite the residual irritation that Peridot felt, she grinned. “It was neither the first time nor the last, I’m sure.”

Amethyst’s own grin was clear in her voice as she replied, “You betcha.”

In the silence that followed, Peridot found herself staring at the top drawer of her desk. Tentatively, she reached for its handle.

“I’m going to rag on you a little more, okay?”

Peridot dropped her hand and stared up at the ceiling. “If you must,” she said on an exhale.

“I think L makes sort of a good point,” Amethyst said. “I mean, why _ didn’t _ you tell her you and Jasper were okay?”

“We’re _ not _okay, though. That’s why—”

“You’re a buttload better than you were! You hang out with her every time you go home, you text—”

Peridot frowned. “It’s not the same.”

“Well, I think that’s a real high bar to set, considering,” Amethyst pressed. “I don’t know, Peridot. I just wish that you’d do something that would make you happy.”

Smiling again despite her best effort, Peridot said, “Sure. Remember how it turned out the last time you gave me advice like that?”

Amethyst snorted. “Fine, keep on punishing yourself, if you want. Throw away your chance with Lapis. But if _ you _ want to make all the trouble _ you _ got yourself into a waste, that’s on you. Behold—” There was the sound of something like shuffling. “Hear that? That’s the sound of me washing my hands of this whole cluster.”

Peridot’s smile quavered as she gazed back out the window. “Yeah?” she said, forcing her voice to sound cheerier than she felt. “Well, good riddance to you then!”

Much later that night—long after ending her phone call with Amethyst—Peridot found herself sneaking back down the length of her bed. Why she felt the need to sneak at all, she couldn’t explain even to herself. But regardless, as quietly and slowly as she could manage, she slid her upper body off the edge of her mattress onto the desk, as she had done countless times before. From there, she pulled open the top drawer that, like a siren’s song, had been distracting her from her technological history paper all evening. From the drawer’s depths she plucked a single scrap of paper. Using the pale light of the street lamp poised just outside her dorm window, she peered down at the photos printed on the paper and the girls depicted in them.

That summer day at Funland felt simultaneously like the day before and like decades ago. Staring hard at the girls, at the expressions on their faces, Peridot could more easily recall the sticky heat of the cramped photobooth, the especially hot weight of Jasper’s arm around her neck. Focusing on the bottom picture, Peridot could more easily recall the brush of Lapis’s lips against her cheek.

Suddenly disgusted with herself, she tossed the slip back into the drawer, slamming it closed with more force than she’d originally intended. Peridot’s prosthetic legs, which had been propped up on the other end of the desk, fell to the floor with a clatter.

Deciding that her paper could wait one more day, Peridot pulled herself back up her mattress, flopped onto her back, and—after another hour spent staring mindlessly at the ceiling—eventually fell asleep.

\---

The first couple of months after returning from camp were, for lack of a better description, weird.

For one, Peridot spent the remainder of the summer in a distinct funk resulting from the whole mess surrounding her fleeting employment. The emails that she received from friends still at camp did nothing to help either, as they would describe (without malice, of course, Peridot was certain) what she was missing: crazy nights spent on the dock, funny anecdotes about campers, et cetera. Each one would close with an awkward, “Wish you were here,” leaving out entirely the fact that Peridot was ever there in the first place.

As much as she appreciated others’ attempts to reach out, the only one of them from whom contact was unconditionally welcome was Amethyst, who mostly just complained. One day mid-July, Amethyst snuck away to call Peridot from Pearl’s office phone to detail the Great Flu Epidemic, during which time all of the Pink Cabin campers came down with what was apparently the stomach bug to end all stomach bugs.

“Remember your hangover from that night we all went out?” Amethyst had asked. “Multiply the intensity by two, multiply the number of kids ralphing by fourteen, and don’t add any extra trash bins. That, homegirl, is what you’re missing right now. Plus, Pearl’s at her wit’s end. Wanna trade places?”

And for the first time since she was fired, Peridot could respond truthfully that, no, she wouldn’t want to even if her life depended on it.

The rest of the summer was also weird because Peridot had grown unused to being stuck in her childhood home for any substantial period of time. She had, after all, spent every June and July at camp since she was young. Plus, she had recently completed her freshman year of college, during which time she lived in a dorm and would only go home for occasional weekends. Being home brought increased scrutiny under the noses of Peridot’s moms—two worrywart lawyers who had a particular brand of loving concern that could rapidly become tiresome.

Because of her moms’ busy work schedules, though, being home concurrently meant spending hours and hours alone. Peridot could only rewatch every season of _ Camp Pining Hearts _ so many times, and she had already beat every video game on her handheld twice. Her few collegiate associates were more akin to acquaintances than actual friends, and Peridot hadn’t really kept any of her local friends when she moved away the previous year.

Except for Jasper, that is. But Jasper wasn’t really an option at first.

From dropping Peridot off on her doorstep, it took Jasper precisely twenty-three days, one hour, and forty-eight minutes to text her. Peridot had spent all of that time on the verge of psychological collapse and, upon hearing her phone buzz and seeing Jasper’s name pop onto the screen, quite nearly burst into tears.

Jasper’s text read, _ u wanna come over? _

Peridot’s original reply had been a five-paragraph essay expressing her abject gratitude, with a heavy-handed narrative detailing the guilt that still plagued her. She ultimately erased this original reply, though, and ended up settling for a simple: _ Yes. Be over in ten. _

And in exactly ten minutes (six of which were spent hyperventilating, two spent changing out of days-old boxers and strapping on legs, and two spent actually walking to Jasper’s house), Peridot found herself knocking on Jasper’s front door. It swung open almost at once, and there stood Jasper, who somehow managed to look twice as big as Peridot remembered.

“Hi,” Peridot squeaked, gaping up at her.

Jasper neither smiled nor frowned. She just wordlessly gestured with her chin for Peridot to follow and retreated down the hallway.

Peridot pursued her through the achingly familiar house, and together they descended the stairs into the basement that had been converted into Jasper’s bedroom four years earlier. It looked exactly the same as it had the last time Peridot had seen it—which, granted, felt much longer ago than it actually was. Jasper’s bed took up half of the room, a tangle of thin sheets bunched into a pile in its center. At the foot of the bed were two beanbag chairs, situated so that they lay a few feet away from a TV balanced on an overturned milk crate. One of the beanbag chairs was squashed almost entirely flat. The other, however, had only a small divot right in its center. Jasper moved automatically to sit in her chair, pulling a game controller close to her chest as she did so. Peridot followed, and slumped into hers. Jasper handed her another game controller.

And that was it. For three hours, they sat in silence and played video games together. Although Peridot consistently felt the urge to press pause, turn to face Jasper, and hash out any and all remaining tensions, she held her tongue. Jasper, she decided, would hold all the cards. So when Jasper eventually stood up and mumbled something about wanting to go to the gym, Peridot merely nodded and showed herself out.

After that, it was only another three days before Jasper texted to invite her over again. After that, it was every day but weekends. After two weeks of that, it was every single day.

With each visit, bit by bit, the sense of suspense and pressure melted away. By about the fourth visit, Jasper started digging snacks out of the kitchen, tossing Peridot a soda or a fun-size bag of chips. On the sixth visit, Jasper started grunting at the TV, which over the next few weeks evolved into cries of exasperation or triumph. The first time Jasper started a real conversation was early August. Jasper asked Peridot whether she was happy to go back to school soon. In response, Peridot teared up.

Jasper paused the game while Peridot wiped helplessly at her eyes. “Come on,” Jasper scolded. “Don’t do that.”

“Sorry,” Peridot said through a shaky smile. “Just—”

“Just nothing.” Jasper rolled her eyes. “Don’t be such a wimp.”

In the middle of her admonishment, however, Jasper made the mistake of smiling a little, too. It was the first time Peridot had seen her best friend smile since before that last night at camp. So Peridot dissolved completely. Jasper kicked her out of her house then but, sure enough, Peridot still awoke to a text from her the next morning.

Conversation became easier, more normal. They’d talk about their families, their upcoming responsibilities associated with returning to school. The two of them were inordinately polite, and jokes weren’t as frequent as they once were. But still, it was _ something _.

They didn’t discuss camp, or Lapis, or anything else in that realm until the last night before Peridot was set to move back into her dorm.

“_Son of a _—”

“Ha!” Peridot cheered, dropping her controller into her lap, arms stretched above her head. “_Eat it _, Jasper!” After a beat, Peridot brought her arms down to her chest. “Sorry,” she added.

Jasper stood and shut off the gaming system, shaking her head as she said around a small grin, “S’fine. I’ll get you next time.”

Peridot nodded. Then she dug her hands into the beanbag chair, fruitlessly trying to push herself up into a standing position. After a moment of watching her struggle, Jasper extended her own hand. Peridot accepted it, and Jasper pulled her up.

“Well,” Peridot said as Jasper dropped her hand, which she then buried deep into the pocket of her shorts. She moved towards the staircase. “‘Next time won’t be for a while, huh?”

Jasper shrugged and followed Peridot up the stairs. “Let me know whenever you’re planning on coming home for a weekend.”

“I will.” As the two shuffled through the kitchen and out into the hallway, Peridot tacked on, “Let me know if you’re too busy to do anything, though.”

Jasper chuckled. At the time, that was the closest to her barking laugh that Peridot heard anymore. “Yeah,” Jasper said just as they reached the front door. “I’m sure all my studying will keep me busy.”

Jasper pulled open the front door, and Peridot stepped through it. With a smirk, Peridot quipped, “Well, maybe it ought to.” Feet planted on the front step, Peridot turned to face Jasper once more. The porch light above her hummed, the sun long since set.

Chuckling again, Jasper brought up her elbow to lean her side against the door frame. “Well, maybe you’re not wrong. Who knows. Without a girlfriend, I might actually have time to fit it in.”

The comment had been so casual. But that didn’t keep Peridot’s face from falling, nor did it keep her gut from freezing over.

A second later, Jasper seemed to realize what she’d said, too. Her easy smirk pursed, and her shoulder rose and fell in a deep breath. An extra second later, Jasper asked, “Have you talked to her?”

Peridot averted her gaze to the porch light. Dead bugs littered the cover’s interior. “Yes,” she finally admitted, dragging the word out in one long syllable.

Jasper took another deep breath. “How’s she doing?”

“Good,” Peridot said, bobbing her head up and down like a bobblehead, her retinas now burning a bit as she kept her eyes resolutely on the light. “She’s good.”

“You guys dating yet?”

“Jasper,” Peridot scolded, dropping her gaze to the concrete beneath their feet.

“What?” Jasper crossed her arms, still leaning on the door frame. “I’m just wondering.”

After a pause, Peridot looked up to meet Jasper’s eye again. “No.”

“Why not?”

“_Jasper. _”

“Peridot,” Jasper replied, her mouth—extraordinarily—turning back up into a smirk. It was an exasperated smirk, eyes wide and eyebrows disappearing underneath her mane of hair. But it was a smirk all the same.

“It’s not—” Peridot opened and closed her mouth a few times, sputtering. “There’s—I don’t want to—You—”

Jasper kicked off the door frame to stand fully on her feet once more, dropping her own gaze to the ground. She grabbed the edge of the door. “Nevermind. I was just wondering. That’s all.”

Peridot snapped her jaw shut. She stared hard at Jasper’s face like she was trying to count each one of her pores. A minute passed, and her narrowed eyes slackened. Peridot sighed, “I’m not going to date her.”

Although Jasper’s head stayed angled downward, her eyes twitched up to meet Peridot’s. “Whatever you say.”

“I’ll stop talking to her if—”

“I’m not asking you to do that.”

“Okay.” Peridot bounced the toe of her boot on the concrete. “Okay,” she said again.

Jasper stepped backwards into the house, closing the door an extra inch. “Text me when you get there safe tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Peridot said one more time. Then, “See you.”

“See you later,” Jasper returned with yet another surprising smirk. And then the door shut with a click.

\---

The morning after her phone call with Amethyst found Peridot in the front row of her technological history class—which was, after all, where she could typically be found on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.

But as the professor was in the process of reminding his class, “There will be no lecture this Thursday in observance of Thanksgiving.” He paused in his droning just long enough to pull his glasses off his face, wiping the lenses on the hem of his coat as he continued. “That means your assignments will be due to me by midnight the night before. That’s _ tomorrow night_, my dear pupils, so do _ not _ forget.”

Just then, a long buzz came from the depths of Peridot’s backpack, which sat beside her laptop. The professor eyed the backpack distastefully before returning his attention to the class at large. When he turned his back to scribble something on the whiteboard, Peridot pounced, retracting her phone from the bag’s front pocket and dropping it into her lap in one fluid movement. From there, she punched in her passcode and read the offending text that awaited her.

_ Amethyst (11/24/2015 at 08:08:12AM): u going home for turkey day? _

With a quick glance shot up at her professor’s back, Peridot tapped out her reply.

_ Peridweeb (11/24/2015 at 08:09:56AM): You’re up early. To answer your question, no. My moms will be out of town at some conference, so I figured there was no point. _

After an extra moment of staring down at her screen, Peridot added:

_ Peridweeb (11/24/2015 at 08:10:09AM): Why? _

A responding text bubble popped up immediately, but it only held the ellipses that indicated an answer was forthcoming. Instead of setting her phone down on her thighs and going back to taking notes or actively listening to the lecture or anything else even remotely productive, for some reason, Peridot could only continue to glare blankly at the screen clutched between her fingers.

“No phones,” the professor suddenly quipped.

“Sorry!” said Peridot as she released her grip and, blushing, replaced her fingers onto her laptop’s keyboard to copy down the bullet points from the whiteboard.

Her phone did not buzz again for the remainder of class and, as she packed up her things, Peridot found that the little ellipses bubble had disappeared without a trace. With a roll of her eyes—because of course Amethyst had just fallen back to sleep after her first text—Peridot tucked her phone into her back pocket and carefully made her way out of the building and across the slick, muddy grass to her next class.

\---

The start of the fall semester had brought with it a host of new discoveries for Peridot, the first being the true ins and outs of living with another person that wasn’t a family member (or, as her summers went, a cabin mate). Peridot had, after all, been lucky enough to be assigned a single-person dorm room during her first year. But, in spite of her initial disappointment when she received the email notification to expect a roommate in the coming year, Peridot came around to the idea. A roommate wasn’t the end of the world. If the best-case scenario worked out, a new roommate could even mean—perhaps not a new_ friend _, necessarily, but at least a new friend-ish acquaintance. And Peridot could not reasonably reject that idea outright, especially when she was feeling the slightest bit desperate for a new start.

Unfortunately, Peridot’s second discovery was that her complete lack of legs below either of her knees caused her new roommate no small amount of discomfort. Even more unfortunately, her third discovery was that her new roommate was—for lack of a kinder description—an utter cockroach.

“She’s like Pearl and Yellow Diamond had a baby,” Peridot complained to Amethyst over video chat the second Saturday night after school began.

Amethyst, who’d been busy picking at her nails, snorted and looked up. “Explain.”

Peridot narrowed her eyes at the empty bed across the room. “She’s bossy, like Pearl. Judgmental. _ Shrewd. _”

Amethyst shrugged and leaned back against her pillows. The image on Peridot’s screen shifted with the movement. “Pearl’s not bad, though,” Amethyst grunted.

“_No, _ you’re right, she’s _ not_!” Peridot replied with an emphatic nod. “Which is where the Yellow Diamond part comes in.”

“What? She’s a huge bitch?”

Peridot opened her mouth to admonish Amethyst for the less-than-favorable language. But then she closed it. And then she said instead, “Yeah. That’s basically it.”

Amethyst cackled in response. Peridot went on to describe several incidents in which her roommate very pointedly made a face or _ shuddered _ —literally _ shuddered _—at her prosthetics. There were also a few incidents in which she seemed to have the same reaction to just plain Peridot herself. And then there were the incidents when Peridot’s roommate decided to open her big, stupid mouth.

“_One time _ ,” Peridot shouted (she _ had to _ shout over the noises of disgust that Amethyst was making), “she even asked me _ explicitly _ to please cover my knees with a blanket whenever I removed my legs because, _ and I quote _—” Peridot paused with her hands splayed wide for dramatic effect. “—they look like something out of a horror movie.”

“I’m gonna kill her,” Amethyst groaned, sitting upright and rolling up the sleeves of her sweatshirt. “I gotta, Peri, I’m sorry. I’m gonna kill her.”

“For once,” Peridot said, setting her mouth into a tight line so that her grin would not burst through, “I’m inclined to not stop you. But, practically speaking, that’s probably not the _ best _ course of action.”

“Well, then, what _ is _?” Amethyst threw her hands wide, past the periphery of her webcam. “This Yellow Pearl wannabe little c—”

“Yellow Pearl?”

“You’re the one who said it!” Amethyst quirked an eyebrow upward. “Yellow Diamond and Pearl? Yellow Pearl. It’s obviously the best code name.”

This time, Peridot couldn’t help cracking a smile. “That’s not bad, actually.”

Amethyst just nodded sagely, and then retracted her hands into her chest to steeple her fingers together. “So, what’s the plan?”

Peridot sighed, “There is no plan. I just—I don’t know. _ Deal _with it, I suppose.”

“Lame,” Amethyst said, dragging out the single syllable and popping her lips on the terminal m. “That’s not how we’re gonna play it, or else Y.P. wins.”

“Wipey?”

“Not _ wipey_! Y.P.! Yellow Pearl. _ Jeez _ , keep up, _ P-Dot _.” Amethyst rolled her eyes dramatically. “Anyway. You said your lil’ ol’ stumpies remind her of a horror movie?”

Peridot mirrored Amethyst’s eye roll. “Don’t call them that. But yeah.”

Amethyst’s wrists rotated, her fingers splayed out in a well-there-you-have-it gesture. “Let’s go with that, then.”

When Yellow Pearl arrived back to their dorm that night, Peridot was there to greet her at her desk. Then, when her roommate decided it was time for lights out, Peridot happily obliged by crawling backwards like a spider—balanced on her hands and the tips of her shins—over the desk and up the length of her bed, before clicking her teeth and wishing Yellow Pearl a simpering, “_ Good night! _”

Peridot’s roommate didn’t say another word about Peridot’s legs after that. And when Peridot began to press the issue further by forming the habit of throwing her prosthetics aside as soon as she was home, _ whenever _ she was home, her roommate began to relieve her discomfort by spending more and more time away from their room instead.

Really, it was a win-win.

The habit stuck, though. And as Peridot finished kicking off her prosthetics after class that Tuesday before Thanksgiving, she dug her phone out of the pocket of her backpack. She checked it once more for a text from Amethyst (to no avail). And then, laptop in tow, she spider-crawled up onto her desk, stretched out on her mattress, and opened up the file containing her technological history paper.

The first hour into her paper, she found herself somehow clicking her way into her email inbox, and then into the message from Lapis from the day before. Before she could get too far past the greeting, however, she clicked out of it. She moved the message to a folder titled, “L,” and then she opened up a television streaming app. Like she had done the night before, she figured the paper could wait.

A few hours and several episodes after that, however, a knock sounded against her door. Certain that whoever it was on the other side was lost and that the person would soon notice the construction-paper placards with Peridot’s and her roommate’s names, realize their mistake, and leave, Peridot remained in her bed, gazing slack-jawed at her laptop screen and the _ Behind the Scenes: The Making of Camp Pining Hearts _ mini-doc that played there.

After a few seconds, the stranger knocked again. Peridot paused her show and checked the time, which was just a few minutes before six o’clock in the evening. Surely anybody looking for Yellow Pearl would know that she’d left early for break? And she couldn’t have done anything to rouse investigation by her RA, right?

Then, again, there was the knock. This time, it kept going—_knockknockknockknockknock_—even as Peridot pushed her laptop off her stomach and snapped, “Hold on a second!”

_ Knockknockknockknock_—

“Son of a—” Peridot grumbled, tumbling down the length of her bed, crawling onto the desk, stretching her fingers to grasp the plastic edge of her left prosthetic.

—_knockknockknockknock_—

“Hold _ on_, will you? I’m _ coming_!” She added under her breath, “Useless _ clod. _”

The incessant knocking cut off suddenly, just as Peridot finished strapping her legs and stood. It took her three strides to reach her door, at which point she clutched the handle, wrenched the thing open, and hollered, “_What! _”

But there was no one there. Just the empty hall, and the bulletin board that advertised group gym classes and free condoms.

“What the—” Peridot began to say.

Then a hard mass of something twisted around the corner, crashed into her, and sent them toppling to the ground. With the wind thoroughly knocked out of her, Peridot wasn’t even given the chance to scream for help before the person pinning her to the ground leaned up enough for Peridot to see her face.

“Did I scare you?” Amethyst asked, grinning wickedly.

“Amethyst!” Peridot wheezed back, fear and anger melting away at once to make room for pure delight. She lunged upwards to latch her arms around Amethyst’s neck.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Amethyst replied, choking a little, and she removed herself from Peridot’s vice-like grip before pushing herself up to stand. Holding out her hand to help Peridot do the same, she added, “I missed you, too.”

“What are you doing here?” Peridot pressed as she struggled to rebalance, placing her hands on Amethyst’s shoulders for support. “I thought you were staying home for Thanksgiving?”

Amethyst chortled. “Um, I’m obviously not. I came to see you! Listen—”

“Did you _ drive_?”

“Yeah, sure did. I—”

“You drove _ nine hours _ to come see me?”

“_Yes. _ And if you’re—”

“_Amethyst _, that’s—”

“_Peri _, dang! Will you shut up for two seconds, please?”

“Oh,” Peridot said, retracting her hands to clap them behind her back. “Yes. Sorry. Go on.”

“Thank you.” Then, with a flourish, Amethyst reached into the pocket of her hoodie and pulled out her car keys, jingling them in Peridot’s face. “Know what these are?”

“Er—” Peridot eyed them warily. “They’re . . . your car keys. Aren’t they?”

“Nope!” Amethyst said, pulling the keys back and tossing them in the air before catching them one-handed. Then she frowned slightly. “Well, I mean, yeah. But they are _ also_—” She threw her arms wide, wiggling her fingers and making the keys jingle again. “—the _ keys _ to your _ destiny_.”

A long pause, then, “I don’t follow.”

“Just trust me will you?” Amethyst brushed past Peridot, grabbed the heavy jacket that adorned Peridot’s bedpost, and tossed it to her. “Put this on, it’s freakin’ _ freezing _ out there. If you have an extra one, too, that would be pretty sweet. Then slap a change of clothes in a backpack, and let’s hit the road!”

“Wh—Hit the _ what_?” Peridot carefully placed the jacket on her desk and followed Amethyst, who had torn open Peridot’s closet door and was rummaging through it. “Where are we going? What are we doing?”

With a casual toss of her hair over her shoulder, Amethyst grinned and twisted one of Peridot’s scarves around her own neck. “We’re gonna go get your girl, that’s what.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peridot embarks on another road trip.

Amethyst flurried around Peridot’s dorm room—much like the light snow that had begun swirling outside the window—as she grabbed items at random and shoved them into Peridot’s school backpack. A cell phone charger from the desk, a half-drank bottle of soda from the nightstand, two pairs of clean underwear from the laundry hamper.

Meanwhile, Peridot remained frozen where she stood. At least, that is, until Amethyst grabbed her underwear, at which point Peridot snapped out an indignant “ _ Hey! _ ” and lunged to wrench the articles from Amethyst’s grasp.

“Trust me, friend, you’re gonna want these,” Amethyst responded, walking back to the laundry basket and pulling out two new pairs. “Five-hour drive to Keystone, and who knows how long you’ll be there for.”

Peridot swiped them from Amethyst’s grasp yet again as her face grew scorching hot. “Stop touching my underpants, please!”

“Whatever, pick your own panties. I don’t care,” Amethyst said with a flippant wave of her hand. Then she reached out to rub the fabric of one of the pairs in Peridot’s fists between her forefinger and thumb. “Except  _ definitely _ bring these. They’re so  _ soft _ .”

With a noise of exasperation, Peridot drew her hands away from Amethyst and stuffed their contents behind one of her pillows. “Just  _ hold on  _ a minute, will you?” she pleaded, spinning on her heel to face Amethyst head-on once more. “I’m not going to go see Lapis.”

“Why not?” asked Amethyst, whose fists settled onto her hips. “You  _ scared _ , or something?”

“ _ Yes _ , actually!”

“Oh.” With a quick nod, Amethyst walked across the room and crawled onto Peridot’s roommate’s bed. “Wait, lemme get comfy,” she explained as she pulled back the quilt and sheets and burrowed underneath them without even taking off her shoes. When her head was propped properly up on the frilly pillow, popping out of the blankets like taquito filling, Amethyst sighed. “Okay. I’m ready. What’s goin’ on?”

Peridot returned the sigh and said, “Nothing.”

“It’s not  _ nothing _ —”

“You don’t understand,” Peridot interrupted. “That’s what’s ‘goin’ on’—” She punctuated the air with finger quotes. “— _ nothing _ . I haven’t seen Lapis in  _ months _ . Our only correspondence has been over email, the latest of which from her directed me  _ explicitly _ to leave her alone. I can’t just go from  _ nothing _ to—what? Showing up outside her dorm to throw rocks at her window?”

Amethyst’s face lit up. “Yeah! That’s a great idea!”

“ _ No, it isn’t! _ ” Peridot rubbed her hands up and down her face, massaging her temples under the earpieces of her glasses. “Listen, please. I can’t just . . . go to Keystone. She doesn’t want me there.”

Amethyst, suddenly serious, sat up. “Come on, Peridot. You  _ know _ that’s not true.”

“How do  _ you _ know that’s not true?” Peridot asked with a quavery, would-be-casual smile. “You’re not the one who—”

“Effed everything up big time?” Amethyst offered. When Peridot opened her mouth to reply, Amethyst cut in again. “All I’m saying is that I don’t think you’re thinking of the same email you read to me. The one  _ I’m _ thinking of had Lapis complaining about how you hadn’t visited her at all and how she’s still got feelings for you.”

Although Peridot’s heartbeat quickened a little at Amethyst’s words, she brushed it off. “I don’t think that’s exactly what she meant.”

“Then you,” Amethyst said, shaking her head and laying back onto the mattress, “are the biggest idiot I’ve ever met.”

“And then Jasper—”

“And then Jasper  _ what _ ? Will hit you again?”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Period grumbled—though her fingers drifted absentmindedly to her jaw. “That wasn’t anywhere close to the worst part.”

“I  _ know _ , Peri. But, like—” Amethyst gave a dry chuckle. “—everything already  _ happened _ , you know? The worst part’s  _ finito _ , friend. Sure, she stopped talking to you. But then she started again.”

Peridot shrugged. “It’s not the same.”

Amethyst sat up again with a groan, this time allowing Peridot’s roommate’s blanket to fall from her shoulders. “Listen, you keep saying that. I know it’s not the same. And, like, it might not ever be the same, which would obviously super  _ blow _ . But you just moping around has clearly zero effect on you and Jasper’s relationship, because you’ve been doing that for six months with apparently nothin’ to show for it if your endgame is going back to like nothing ever happened.”

“That’s not true,” Peridot said pointedly. “It’s only been five months.”

There was a long pause before Amethyst barked out in laughter. Something like laughter bubbled up Peridot’s throat, too, but she swallowed it down.

“Come on, Peridot,” Amethyst said eventually, after her giggles had mostly subsided, and patted the mattress. Without any extra bidding, Peridot hoisted herself onto it, and Amethyst hooked her elbow around Peridot’s neck to pull her into a hug. “I can’t stand seeing you like this.”

“Like what?” Peridot mumbled from where her face was smushed against Amethyst’s collarbone.

Amethyst grabbed Peridot by the shoulders, and pushed to hold her at arm’s length. “I love you and all, but you’re straight up depressing.”

The laughter that had threatened Peridot earlier burst out unexpectedly, and Peridot clapped her hand over her mouth.

“And crazy, too, apparently,” Amethyst added, dropping her hands into her lap and shaking her head, smiling.

Peridot rubbed her eyelids from under her glasses. “I know. I’m not doing . . . great.”

“Dude, let’s just get out of here then!” Amethyst pounced off the bed and made for Peridot’s backpack again. “Take a break and come on a roadtrip with me!”

Peridot rolled her eyes. “I don’t know whether a ‘roadtrip’ that entails me showing up to Lapis’s dorm unannounced—”

Amethyst’s head fell back as she groaned at the ceiling. “ _ Whatever _ , I won’t make you do that if you’re going to be such a big  _ baby _ about it. But let’s go anyway! Let’s go to Keystone!”

“And do  _ what _ , exactly?”

“I don’t know, man, whatever you want! Let’s visit Jaz, let’s vandalize your old school, let’s just hang out at your house and play video games and be able to use a shower that you don’t have to share with the twenty other chicks on your floor.” Amethyst shoved the backpack into Peridot’s arms, her own then free to cross over her chest. “Literally what else are you doing, anyway?”

Peridot blinked. “My technological history paper, I guess.”

“When’s it due?”

“Tomorrow night.”

Amethyst reached to swipe Peridot’s laptop off her bed, then stuffed it unceremoniously into the backpack. “Do it in the car. You can make me feel dumb by telling me all the stuff I don’t know.”

Peridot pouted, then nodded. “I miss that.”

“Great! It’s settled.” With a triumphant smirk, Amethyst spun to dig Peridot’s underwear out from under her pillow. Then she held them in the air like a trophy and said, “Let’s hit it!”

\---

Amethyst’s car was, by Peridot’s approximation, five thousand years old and had enough layers of trash littering the floorboards to prove it. But Peridot didn’t mind that necessarily, nor did she really mind the shudder the vehicle made whenever they came to a complete stop or the flattened, threadbare seat cushions. What she did mind was the way the air conditioner refused to spit out anything warmer than a glacial breeze, and the way Amethyst smiled apologetically and said, “Sorry. It’s kind of touch and go. That’s why I asked for the extra coat.”

“If I’d known that,” Peridot replied snappishly, propping her feet on what couldn’t have been less than twenty empty fast food bags and burrowing her chin deeper into her scarf, “I would’ve just stayed in my nice, warm dorm!”

“Yeah, and that’s why I didn’t tell ya, dummy.”

Peridot’s irritated exhale was visible in the cold, curling in front of her face like cigarette smoke. Seeing it made her insides squirm.

She was quick to volunteer to run inside a convenience store to procure chips and energy drinks while Amethyst fueled up the car. After her purchases were made, Peridot stood for a while by the rotating hot dogs, her face a little closer to the heat than was probably sanitary, until a long blast of a horn signalled her cue to face the icy air outside again. She wasn’t too keen to do so at first, but when she looked up to stick her tongue out at Amethyst through the store’s big windows, she laid eyes on the display next to which she’d been standing. It carried bandanas every color of the rainbow.

It was completely unrelated that Peridot chose to flee at that moment, throwing all her weight into the doors and inhaling the frigid chill with relish. She didn’t stop shivering for a while after that, even when Amethyst gave the car’s dashboard a good thump with her fist and whooped loudly in celebration as the heater finally kicked into gear.

For a long time after Peridot left camp, she’d had two bandanas just like the ones from the convenience store—one yellow, one pink—stashed away, tucked deep under her mattress at her parents’ house. She’d hidden them there the same day she’d returned. It took Peridot weeks over the rest of the summer to close her eyes and not think about how she was supposed to be somewhere else, but sometime around the close of July (not so coincidentally, perhaps, around the time Camp Hidden Gem’s summer session ended) she managed to forget that the bandanas were even there.

If she had remembered, at least, she certainly wouldn’t have let Jasper help her move her mattress to school a month into the semester.

“You really don’t have to,” Peridot said, though she remained seated at her desk folding the laundry one of her moms had done for her, as she had been doing since Jasper’s arrival.

Jasper chuckled and blew a piece of her hair away from her nose as she bent to clutch the long end of Peridot’s naked mattress. “I don’t, do I? You gonna do this yourself then?”

Peridot smiled and leaned back in her chair. “Would if I could, of course.”

“Of course.” Jasper pushed the mattress so that it stood straight up and began to wiggle it off the bed frame. “Dorm bed really that bad?”

“It’s fine, I guess. It’s just lumpy. And dirty. And has a spring poking out of the side.”

“So, yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“How are you getting it down there anyway?”

“Moms are renting a trailer. They’re on their way back right now.”

“A  _ trailer _ ?” Jasper said with a grunt as she tugged the mattress across Peridot’s room. “To hook up to what car? Not the  _ coupe _ ?”

“What other car do they have?”

From out in the hallway, the mattress halfway through the door, Jasper shouted, “No way. That’s  _ criminal _ .” The mattress moved out of Peridot’s sight and, after a dull thumping sound, Jasper reappeared in the doorway. “Why didn’t you just ask me to drive it up with the van?”

Peridot, who was in the middle of haphazardly rolling a sweatshirt into a ball, froze. “I didn’t want to inconvenience you.”

Jasper rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “When’d that ever stop you before?”

“And my school’s so far away.”

“Maybe I would’ve stayed the night or something.”

Peridot’s unrolled the sweatshirt and turned her body fully towards her desk—anything to hide her growing smile—before trying to focus on folding it properly. “I didn’t want to make any assumptions.”

“Peridot,” Jasper started, with a becoming-familiar air of reprimand. “We used to—”

Of course, Jasper used to drive to Peridot’s college town and spend a weekend there semi-frequently the previous year. But Jasper didn’t get the opportunity to voice as much, as she’d stopped dead in the middle of her sentence.

Peridot looked at Jasper over her shoulder. “What—” And then she followed Jasper’s steady line of sight to the carpet, where the pink and yellow bandanas lay tangled. “Oh.”

Jasper threw Peridot sort of a stunned-looking expression before stepping forward and scooping the yellow bandana off the ground.

Peridot swiveled her body to face Jasper head on. “That’s yours.”

Jasper looked at Peridot again, nodded curtly, and sat cross-legged where she stood. “Where’d you get it?” she asked, far quieter than normal.

Peridot scooched off the edge of her chair and sat, too, folding her metal shins in front of her with her hands. When she was settled, she explained, “Pearl. When you left it on her desk, she gave it to me to give back to you.”

“What?” Jasper snapped, whipping her head to sneer at Peridot. “Why didn’t you?”

Peridot’s chin fell a bit as she struggled to find the right answer. “I didn’t—I didn’t think you would want it, I suppose. I thought it would bring up a lot of really bad memories.”

“It does,” Jasper confirmed, tightening her grip around the yellow fabric.

“Oh. I can . . . I can get rid of it, if you—”

“No.” Jasper shook her head once, sharply.

“Okay . . . But—uh. Why—”

“It brings up good ones, too.” Jasper dropped her hand into her lap and peered at Peridot with her mouth in a tight line. “You look like you’re scared I’m gonna hit you.”

Peridot tried to relax the tightness in her jaw. “Can you blame me?”

A beat passed, and then Jasper cocked a small grin. “Guess not. But you gotta get over it.”

“Is that possible?” Peridot asked, frowning.

“Getting over it?” Jasper’s smile fell. “I think so.”

“Are  _ you _ over it?”

Running a hand through her mass of hair, Jasper released an exasperated sigh. “Listen, I’m not saying that I’ve, like, forgotten everything. Or anything. But—” She grinned again, wider than before, and gently punched Peridot’s bicep. “—I sure like you a lot better than I did a few months ago. That’s something.”

“Yeah. That’s something.” Peridot returned a weak smile of her own, swallowing down the hard lump crawling up her throat. “I miss before, though. Before everything.”

Jasper glanced down at the handkerchief she was twisting around her fingers. “Me, too.”

They spent a long measure in half-tense silence.

“You know,” Jasper said eventually, “it’s probably just cheaper to buy a new mattress.”

Peridot nodded sagely. “Emotionally, at least.”

\---

“Are you mad at Lapis?”

Amethyst and Peridot hadn’t exchanged a word for about fifty miles, and Peridot snapped her head to gape at Amethyst so suddenly that a muscle spasmed.

“What are you talking about?” Peridot hissed, bringing her hand from her laptop keyboard to massage the side of her neck. “Where did that come from?”

Amethyst shrugged and dug her hand deep into the chip bag between her thighs. “Just been thinking, is all.”

“Thinking about what, precisely?”

“About why you don’t want to go after li’l Lappy. Duh.”

“I told you already. It’s not a matter of not  _ wanting  _ to, it’s not  _ being able  _ to.”

“You know what, Dot?” Amethyst popped a chip into her mouth and gave it a good crunch. “I’ve been thinking that’s not totally it, though.”

Peridot narrowed her eyes at Amethyst before returning to her paper. “Well, you’re defective.”

Without warning, Amethyst slapped the top of Peridot’s laptop closed.

“ _ Amethyst! _ ” Peridot hollered, snatching her fingers out of harm’s way in the nick of time. “I didn’t save that!”

“It’s  _ fine _ , it’s not like I turned it off!”

Peridot made to reopen her laptop, and Amethyst pushed it down again, making the car swerve a little with the effort. “You’re gonna kill us!” shrieked Peridot.

Amethyst righted the steering wheel. “I am gonna kill you if you don’t talk about this with me! Come on, Peridot, it’s important.”

Peridot crossed her arms over her chest. “You told me you wouldn’t force me to talk about it.”

“ _ No, _ ” Amethyst corrected. “I told you I wasn’t going to make you go to Lapis and apologize for being such a putz. If I happen to talk you into doing that on your own, that’s different.”

Looking resolutely out the window at the snow that had, at some point in their journey, turned to rain, Peridot chewed on her inner cheek in silence.

The silence only lasted a few seconds before Amethyst prompted, “So, come on. Are you mad at her, or what?”

Peridot grunted, “What would I be mad about?”

“I don’t know if you’re actually looking for an answer, boo, but we’ve been silent long enough for me to come up with some possibilities,” Amethyst said coyly before holding one finger away from her grip on the steering wheel. “One, you’re still peeved at her for when she made fun of your Percy-Pierre fic that one time. But now that I say it I’m like, nah, you got over that really quick ’cause she’d pointed out a continuity error or something and it ended up being a good thing.” She held up a second finger. “I’m kind of thinking instead that, two, you’re still peeved with how she acted at camp after you guys hooked up. Which, like, fair. But you’ve never really beefed about it since. So.” A third finger, “Three, maybe the closer you get to really starting something with L the more you’re thinking about the fact that she completely cheated on Jasper and, even though it was  _ with you _ , ‘once a cheater,’ you know.”

Before Amethyst could hold up a fourth finger, Peridot turned in her seat to hold one of her own under Amethyst’s nose and shouted, “ _ One _ , I am  _ not _ mad at Lapis, but thank you for bringing all that up because that makes me feel just  _ so great. _ ” A second finger shot up. “ _ Two _ , I told you I don’t want to talk about it, which means  _ I don’t want to talk about it _ . So if you’re going to insist on doing so,  _ I’m  _ going to insist you turn around right now and drive me back to school. And  _ three— _ ” Peridot balled her fingers into a fist, which curled into her chest. “—you have absolutely, inarguably, and totally  _ no room  _ to psychoanalyze me when I don’t see you hopping in your car to drive across the colonies to make some ridiculous romantic gesture to  _ Pearl! _ So—”

If looks could kill, Amethyst’s would’ve done Peridot in an instant. “ _ Hey.  _ That is  _ nowhere _ near the same thing.”

“Oh,  _ really _ ?”

“ _ Yeah,  _ really!”

“You  _ are _ defective, then.”

Amethyst spluttered and held up a single finger again, “ _ One _ —”

“ _ Enough with the numbering! _ ”

“Fine.  _ A— _ ” Amethyst waited just long enough for Peridot to release a scream-groan of exasperation before continuing on. “She told me that she wasn’t interested. I’m not about to go try to change her mind and end up looking like a stalker creepo weirdo. B—”

“That’s not what she said,” Peridot replied, but with far less bite than she’d been feeling a second earlier.

“Oh, right, sorry. Here’s what she said.” Amethyst cleared her throat and spoke in a high, proper voice. “ ‘Amethyst, I am flattered, but I am in no fit position to pursue a romantic relationship, especially one with a person five years my junior.’”

“Sure. That didn’t stop her kissing you last night of camp, though.”

Amethyst sighed. “ _ I _ kissed  _ her _ .”

“And by your account it lasted far more than long enough to qualify as her kissing you back.”

“Okay, whatever, still. What she said is a pretty solid  _ no _ as far as I’m concerned.”

“Oh.” Peridot made a show of tapping her chin with her index finger. “That’s funny. Like how Lapis explicitly told me to not contact her until she figures out her feelings for herself. Huh. Weird.”

Amethyst scream-groaned wordlessly at the roof of her car. Then she leaned far back into her seat, arms ramrod straight against the steering wheel, brooding. “It’s  _ different _ , Peridot! P drew a line with me because she’s, like, an adult, and she’s responsible, and  _ proper _ , and she has her priorities, and—” She broke off to heave a great sigh. “I’ve got to respect that, you know? Even if I think it stinks.”

Peridot had sunk in a bit on herself, and her fingers itched to give Amethyst a hardy pat on the shoulder. Before she could reach her hand out, though, Amethyst twisted in her seat to pin Peridot with a withering glare.

“ _ Lapis _ , on the other hand, drew a line because  _ you  _ drew a line. She gave you practically  _ forever _ to get over yourself and erase that line, but nah.” Amethyst was picking up in animatedness as she ranted, often releasing the wheel to gesticulate wildly towards the windshield. “ _ Nah _ , you were too effin’  _ stubborn _ , and  _ proud _ , and you strung her along, and now you gotta deal with your own dumbass consequences ‘cause—”

“_Hey!_” Peridot shouted at last, slapping the dashboard with enough force to surprise herself that the airbags hadn’t been triggered. “That’s _enough!_ I’m getting tired of you projecting your baggage onto me, Amethyst!”

Amethyst barked out a quick, cruel laugh. “That’s right, I’m sorry! _I’m_ the bag boy in this situation, as always! Just _excuuuse_ _me!_”

Face and eyes stinging with heat, Peridot wrenched her laptop back open and glowered at the screen. “Drive me back to school, please,” she seethed.

Amethyst seethed back, “I’m not turning around and driving you back to school just to drive back to my ma’s place, idiot. You’re stuck with me.”

Peridot could’ve spit at her. “ _ Fine.  _ Whatever. I don’t care.”

Based on the way Amethyst’s mouth was puckering into nonexistence, it was probably safe to say that Amethyst was feeling much the same way. “ _ Fine, _ ” she imitated in a high, nasally voice. “I don’t care either.”

“ _ Fine. _ ”

“ _ Fine! _ ”

And they fell into a tense silence, Peridot slumping against the chilly car window and staring unseeingly at the half-finished word document in front of her.

\---

On what was supposed to be Peridot’s last day of camp that summer, she holed herself up in her bedroom. Her parents were at work, so she hadn’t needed to prepare an excuse for them. She had prepared one for Jasper, as they had finally settled into hanging out daily, however nonverbal their sessions might have been at that point. But she hadn’t ended up needing to use it, as Jasper did not end up reaching out to her that day either. Peridot couldn’t blame her, if Jasper was feeling a funk similar to her funk. 

Instead, upon waking mid-morning, Peridot wrapped herself in her bed covers, turned on her television to a marathon of a reality series she could not care less about if she tried, and tried her damnedest not to mull over the fact that, at that very moment, everyone at Camp Hidden Gem was engaged in attending closing ceremonies, bidding fond farewells, and planning their returns for the following year—and that Peridot was not only robbed of the tradition, but would never again experience it.

To her relief, the day did pass almost quickly enough for her liking. Days tended to do that if one took a sufficient amount of depression naps. But when she woke to her phone buzzing late afternoon, it was with a sigh of somewhat despaired exasperation, because the person on the other end of the line was Amethyst, who was clearly calling with her final summer report. As good as Amethyst was at saying just the right things to make the camp-shaped hole in Peridot’s heart hurt less, that day in particular found Peridot not in the mood. It was then with a gargantuan sense of martyrdom that Peridot answered the phone with only a minimally detectable amount of annoyance.

Peridot’s pity parade was quickly forgotten, however, when the first words out of Amethyst’s mouth were, “I macked Pearl.”

“You—” Peridot pressed her phone harder to her ear and stuck her finger into the other, sure she’d misheard her. “You  _ smacked _ Pearl? Amethyst, why—”

“ _ No _ , Peri,  _ listen. _ ” Amethyst’s voice was manic, clearly at the edge of screeching. “I. Macked. Pearl.”

“You . . .  _ macked  _ her? What does that mean?”

“Macked! You  _ know!  _ Made out with, snogged, whatever your nerdy ass calls it. I  _ kissed  _ her!”

There was a beat of weighted silence. Then Peridot surged upright, her blankets falling from her shoulders, and she shouted, “You kissed  _ Pearl!? _ ”

In lieu of answering, Amethyst just screamed excitedly into the phone.

“ _ But— _ ” Peridot looked frantically around her bedroom as if the explanation could be found somewhere there. “What?  _ Why?  _ Pearl? Like,  _ our _ Pearl? Junior director, law-school sweetheart, stick up her butt  _ Pearl? _ ”

“Yes!” Amethyst replied. “Of  _ course _ that Pearl, how many other Pearls do we know?”

“I’m sorry,” said Peridot, thoroughly flabbergasted, “but I have to re-ask the question of  _ why? _ ”

“Because I wanted to!”

“Okay . . . But . . .  _ Why? _ ”

“I don’t know!” Peridot knew that, if she could’ve seen her, Amethyst’s smile would split her face ear to ear. “It just sort of happened! I guess with how much we’d been hanging out at camp—”

“ _ Have  _ you been?”

An exasperated sigh, then, “Peridot, do you not listen to me when I talk to you?”

“Of course I do! I mean—” Peridot was momentarily distracted by her TV, on which the actress who played Paulette on  _ Camp Pining Hearts  _ made an unexpected appearance in a commercial advertising something or other. She gave her head a little shake. “I try to. But—”

Peridot remembered just then that, right at the end of her own tenure at camp, Amethyst  _ had _ been spending more time with Pearl. Peridot just didn’t realize it until she looked at it through the lens of hindsight. The couple of nights that Amethyst spent hanging back at the campfire, Amethyst going straight to Pearl’s side after Peridot and Jasper had climbed into the van, a very vivid flashback of Jasper spitting at Pearl’s feet and Amethyst lunging forward as if ready to fight. Those things coupled with the stories that Amethyst had told her since her departure—and how many of them, maybe even most of them, featured Pearl, even if only in some small, seemingly throwaway-detail kind of way.

“Do you like her? Like, _like her _like her?” Peridot asked.

“Yeah,” Amethyst answered, quieter than before. “I do. S’weird, huh?”

“That’s one word for it, certainly.”

Peridot asked her to explain how it happened, and Amethyst did. Just the previous night, she’d been helping Pearl stow away camp supplies in the shed next to her office. Pearl latched the padlock, brushed her hands together, and thanked Amethyst for her help.

“Not just for helping her put stuff away, but, like, for everything. For stepping in as counselor when—you know.”

“Oh, I know,” Peridot said, nodding.

“And then she told me how she was, like, impressed with me, and how good she’d thought I’d stepped into the role and how mature I’d become and—I don’t know exactly what came over me but, suddenly,  _ bam! _ ” A semi-crazed laugh bubbled out of Amethyst. “I just grabbed her, pulled her down, and laid one on her!”

“Very mature, indeed,” Peridot teased. But she didn’t have the right to give Amethyst too hard of a time for making spur-of-the-moment decisions about kissing people, all things considered. “What did she do?”

“Well, she didn’t push me off of her,” Amethyst said with the verbal equivalent of a wink.

“How long?”

“I didn’t count. But probably like twenty seconds, give or take?”

“Wow.”

“I know.”

Peridot laid back on her pillows and hiked her blanket to her chin. “Then what?”

Amethyst paused for a moment. Then, with an audible sigh, she said, “She, uh. She didn’t say anything. And then she kind of shut herself inside of her office? So I went to bed.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Hey.”

“Sorry.” Peridot frowned. “Did you see her today?”

“’Course I did.”

“And?”

“. . . And?”

“Well, what  _ happened? _ ”

The  _ whoosh _ of a sigh came from Amethyst’s end. “Nothing.”

“Amethyst, please,” Peridot bemoaned, snaking her fingers beneath her glasses to rub her eye. “You know I’m not very good at ‘girl talk,’ but you have to meet me halfway.”

“No, that’s it, though. Nothing happened.”

“You guys didn’t talk at breakfast? Or loading up the buses? Or—”

“ _ No, _ ” Amethyst interrupted, a tad grumpily if Peridot wasn’t very much mistaken.

“Okay,” Peridot said. “Why?”

“I  _ tried,  _ okay! I kept trying to walk up to her to talk to her, but every time I did she would just, like, find something to distract her.”

“I mean, she could’ve actually been really busy, right? Last day, and everything. Maybe she didn’t really see you.”

“One time she looked straight at me, spun around, and hid behind the closest door she could find. Which was the boys’ bathroom.”

“Oh,” Peridot said simply.

Amethyst continued, “Yeah. So, game plan is give her a minute and then eventually email her and figure out what’s going on on her end. From there—” Peridot could see Amethyst’s shrug in her mind’s eye. “—we wait and see.”

Peridot squinted up at her ceiling. “But you were so excited. Why were you so excited if you don’t even know what she’s thinking? What if she ends up telling you that it was a mistake or something.”

“Ouch. Harsh, much?”

“Sorry. Again. I meant—”

“Nah, I know what you meant. You’re fine,” Amethyst said, voice betraying nothing beyond genuine nonchalance. “For one thing, I just got a good feeling. For another—I don’t know. I miss ya, Per Bear. I was excited to tell you.”

“Wow,” Peridot said on an exhale, fighting a grin that Amethyst couldn’t have seen anyway. “That’s nice. Thanks.”

“For sure, boo.” Amethyst chuckled. “It’s nice to be the center of some Camp Pining Drama for once.”

\---

The car passed the Keystone welcome sign late in the evening, and Amethyst spoke for the first time in hours to ask which exit to use to get to Peridot’s moms’ house. Peridot just as curtly—but perhaps not as icily—gave her directions with the cordiality of a navigation system. It was just around eleven o’clock, then, that Amethyst pulled her car into the home’s empty driveway and shifted her car into park. The girls sat in silence for an extra second before Amethyst, still not looking at Peridot, opened the car door with a huff.

“I’ll sleep on the couch,” she said, slammed the door behind her, and walked around the back to pop the trunk.

Peridot hastened to exit the car herself, but found her feet tangled beneath mounds of trash (had it multiplied in the last few hours?), which was further complicated by Peridot’s juggling her laptop so that it wouldn’t fall and also be lost to the crumb-lined abyss below. More than once, Peridot considered unstrapping her legs and leaving them behind, but ultimately decided it was much too cold for her to crawl across the pavement. Finally, she freed herself, opened the passenger-side door, and clambered out of her seat, just in time for Amethyst to pull the trunk shut. Though she had pulled Peridot’s overnight bag from its depths, Amethyst left it on the sidewalk and walked silently to Peridot’s front door, where she waited.

“You know,” Peridot mumbled, not sure if she was being loud enough for Amethyst to hear her, and especially not sure if she wanted to be, “you’re just hurting yourself here. Keeping yourself in the cold longer. It’s not like you have the key.”

No sooner had Peridot laid a hand on her backpack than the front door swung open. Before Amethyst disappeared behind it, she waived Peridot’s keys in the air, the little alien motif key ring jingling with the movement. The front zip pouch of Peridot’s backpack, meanwhile, was plainly open, as if the bag’s jaw had dropped in surprise.

“Oh, sure,” Peridot said grumpily as she marched up the driveway, fumbling with her backpack strap and laptop, and to the half-open front door. “No, yeah, take my keys. What do I care?”

The house’s interior was completely dark, but Peridot’s muscle memory led her fingertips straight to the light switch, which she flipped while bumping the door closed behind her with her hip. Across the entryway was the living room. In the living room was the large, L-shaped sofa, faced away from the entrance. And peeking over the back of the leather cushions were the soles of Amethyst’s sheepskin boots. Peridot sighed, dropped her things on the ground where she stood, and walked with purpose around the room until she could drop herself on the seat on the couch’s other end.

“Amethyst,” she said, sliding her clasped hands between her knees.

Amethyst—who had disappeared beneath the hood of Peridot’s puffiest winter coat, drawn low over her eyes, as she laid back on Peridot’s mom’s decorative pillows with her feet propped up—grunted in acknowledgement.

Had it been physically possible, Peridot’s foot would’ve been bouncing. With another sigh, she asked, “Remember how I sometimes kind of, sort of—you know—get really mean when I want to avoid talking about something?”

“ _ Pssh, _ ” Amethyst exhaled. “Yeah.”

“Well. I think maybe I did that. You know. In the car.”

Amethyst sat up and pushed her hood back, crossing her legs underneath her and fixing Peridot with a serious, but not necessarily heated, stare. “Yeah, I figured.”

“I’m sorry,” Peridot said. “I’m trying to . . . not . . . do that.”

“I know. You’re getting better at apologizing, though.”

“Heh,” Peridot chuckled, tucking a hand beneath her hair to scratch at the nape of her neck. “Thanks.”

After a somewhat lengthy pause, Amethyst asked, “So . . . Does this mean you want to talk now?” When Peridot opened her mouth to reply, Amethyst lifted her hands in front of her. “I’m really not trying to force ya, girl. I just think you maybe kind of need to talk about it. I’m just trying to be a pal, here, but—”

“No,” Peridot said with a nod. “I want to talk about it.”

Amethyst mirrored the nod and placed her hands in her lap. “Okay,” she said simply, and waited.

It was a few long moments before Peridot sighed. “It’s just . . .  _ easier _ , this way.”

“What way?”

“In—you know.” Peridot sighed again, diverting her gaze from Amethyst to the fireplace mantle across from them, decorated with various kitsch and a photo of Peridot when she graduated high school, framed by her parents. “It’s easier to let her go now than it would be to let her go later.”

Amethyst hummed, then said, “Why do you need to let her go at all?”

Peridot shrugged helplessly. “It’s not like I  _ need _ to. It’s just that—I don’t know. It’s probably going to happen at some point, right? Like, I still feel so,  _ so  _ guilty—”

“That’s not fair, though,” Amethyst interrupted. “Jaz has gotten over it.”

“I  _ know _ , but that doesn’t absolve me of the bad things I did! I think I’m always going to feel guilty, and that’s going to affect how I act with  _ her _ , not to mention that starting ourselves off the way we did is pretty transparently not a good foundation for—for a  _ relationship _ of any kind. Plus—”

“Peridot.”

“No! It’s hopeless, okay?” Peridot, inexplicably, laughed. “Anything that—that  _ Lapis  _ and I have is hopeless. It started bad; it will finish bad. That’s the law of physics. So it’s much,  _ much  _ easier to just let her go now and move on then to ask her to stay and try to work something out that’s not going to work out.”

Amethyst frowned and cocked her head to the side. “Lapis makes you happy, though, boo.”

Peridot shook her head and replied, “I don’t know.”

“I love you, Peri,” Amethyst said around a sympathetic smile, the kind of smile people use when talking to really stupid people. “But I think you’re being stupid.”

Peridot erupted in laughter again, squeezed her eyes tight as tears began leaking from them, and eventually managed a shaky, “Yeah, maybe,” before finally dissolving into a big, stupid, crying mess.

“Jeez,” Amethyst said simply, scooching forward to pull Peridot into her embrace. “C’mere, dummy.”

They sat together hugging for what felt like hours before Peridot regained control of herself. When her face was dry, she muttered, “Love you, too.”

And Amethyst just hummed, already having fallen half-asleep sitting up.

**Author's Note:**

> special thank you to quickyoke (ao3)/romanimp (tumblr) to being the best beta pal and reviewing the two chapters i've written thus far
> 
> another special thanks to new readers and old for getting cph 1.0 to 1k kudos and making all my lil fic author dreams come true
> 
> find me on tumblr under the name mkandas (and tags for this fic under "continued pining hearts")


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